Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #335

The Week That Was: 2018-11-10 (November 10, 2018)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “The people who are supposed to be the experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence…I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind. That to me is the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that the whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?” – Freeman Dyson, foreword in a report by Indur Goklany [H/t Robert Brinsmead]

Number of the Week: 26 times market rate

THIS WEEK:

Ignoring Evidence: In books such as “The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives On a Cleaner Planet,” Indur Goklany presented extensive, carefully researched evidence supporting the topic in the title. In his 2015 report “CARBON DIOXIDE: The good news,” Goklany presents carefully researched evidence showing the enormous benefits from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide to humanity and the environment. Many economists, politicians, and commentators on the social cost of carbon dioxide ignore evidence of the benefits of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide.

Why “experts” choose to ignore the evidence and prefer to think the human condition is becoming more deplorable, made worse by the use of fossil fuels, is known only to them. Apparently, they imagine a more primitive, simpler world, where the only energy use replacing muscle power from humans and animals is unreliable wind and solar. A few stories in the November 7 Siberian Times give an indication of what life is like in the more primitive world when people go too far from the safety of the village and its energy sources. “Teenage dies a hero after saving his cousin from bear attack” describes how a 16-year-old boy distracted a brown bear that attacked his 13-year-old cousin. The older boy was killed and buried by the bear for future consumption.

Now retired, Freeman Dyson is a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is noted for unifying the three versions of quantum electrodynamics by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga. Also, he is noted for his contributions to solid-state physics, astronomy, and nuclear engineering. His foreword to Goklany’s report on carbon dioxide merits quoting beyond what is above:

“Indur Goklany has done a careful job, collecting and documenting the evidence that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm. To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

“I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing. I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind. That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts? In this foreword I offer a tentative solution of the mystery.

“There are many examples in the history of science of irrational beliefs promoted by famous thinkers and adopted by loyal disciples. Sometimes, as in the use of bleeding as a treatment for various diseases, irrational belief did harm to a large number of human victims. George Washington was one of the victims. Other irrational beliefs, such as the phlogiston theory of burning or the Aristotelian cosmology of circular celestial motions, only did harm by delaying the careful examination of nature. In all these cases, we see a community of people happily united in a false belief that brought leaders and followers together. Anyone who questioned the prevailing belief would upset the peace of the community.

Real advances in science require a different cultural tradition, with individuals who invent new tools to explore nature and are not afraid to question authority. Science driven by rebels and heretics searching for truth has made great progress in the last three centuries. But the new culture of scientific scepticism is a recent growth and has not yet penetrated deeply into our thinking. The old culture of group loyalty and dogmatic belief is still alive under the surface, guiding the thoughts of scientists as well as the opinions of ordinary citizens.

To understand human behavior, I look at human evolution. About a hundred thousand years ago, our species invented a new kind of evolution. In addition to biological evolution based on genetic changes, we began a cultural evolution based on social and intellectual changes. Biological evolution did not stop, but cultural evolution was much faster and quickly became dominant. Social customs and beliefs change and spread much more rapidly than genes.

Cultural evolution was enabled by spoken languages and tribal loyalties. Tribe competed with tribe and culture with culture. The cultures that prevailed were those that promoted tribal cohesion. Humans were always social animals, and culture made us even more social. We evolved to feel at home in a group that thinks alike. It was more important for a group of humans to be united than to be right. It was always dangerous and usually undesirable to question authority. When authority was seriously threatened, heretics were burned at the stake.

I am suggesting that the thinking of politicians and scientists about controversial issues today is still tribal. Science and politics are not essentially different from other aspects of human culture. Science and politics are products of cultural evolution. Thinking about scientific questions is still presented to the public as a competitive sport with winners and losers. For players of the sport with public reputations to defend, it is more important to belong to a winning team than to examine the evidence.

Cultural evolution was centered for a hundred thousand years on tales told by elders to children sitting around the cave fire. That cave-fire evolution gave us brains that are wonderfully sensitive to fable and fantasy, but insensitive to facts and figures. To enable a tribe to prevail in the harsh world of predators and prey, it was helpful to have brains with strong emotional bonding to shared songs and stories. It was not helpful to have brains questioning whether the stories were true. Our scientists and politicians of the modern age evolved recently from the cave-children. They still, as Charles Darwin remarked about human beings in general, bear the indelible stamp of their lowly origin

Dyson describes how he opposed a 1978 effort by the Department of Energy called: “Comprehensive Plan for Carbon Dioxide Effects Research and Assessment.” The plan ignored the beneficial direct effects of carbon dioxide increase on plant growth.

My protest received no attention and the Comprehensive Plan prevailed. As a result, the public perception of carbon dioxide has been dominated by the computer climate-model experts who designed the plan. The tribal group-thinking of that group of experts was amplified and reinforced by a supportive political bureaucracy.

Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence. Goklany and I do not claim to be infallible. Like the climate-model experts, we have also evolved recently from the culture of the cave-children. Like them, we have inherited our own set of prejudices and blindnesses. Truth emerges when different groups of explorers listen to each other’s stories and correct each other’s mistake.

As discussed in prior TWTWs, such as September 29, 2018, the 1979 Charney Report of the National Academy of Sciences, and the 1982 second assessment report of the National Research Council, were dominated by climate modelers. These reports found that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in general will have a far greater atmospheric warming effect than indicated by decades of laboratory research. These findings were based on guesses, hypotheses, not actual hard evidence. As discussed by Freeman Dyson above, the 1978 carbon dioxide plan by the Department of Energy was dominated by climate modelers. At the time there was no method of systematically testing the guesses of the modelers with hard evidence of temperature trends in the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gas effect occurs.

We now have almost 40 years of atmospheric temperature trends, taken by satellites and independently confirmed by different sets of data by different entities using different instruments on weather balloons. The greenhouse gas warming is not occurring as the climate modelers have guessed. As a group, the models greatly overestimate the warming trends of the bulk atmosphere, with the US models among the worst.

As discussed in the September 22 TWTW, the McKitrick-Christy Hypothesis Test focuses on a specific layer of the atmosphere that should be unaffected by other human influences and for which we have about 60 years of data for a sliver of the atmosphere. Again, the 20 modeling groups tested overestimate the warming trend by a factor of 2. The modelers have no explanation for this and ignore such tests. Clearly, the primary cause of climate change is not carbon dioxide.

Given this failure of the models to describe what is occurring in the atmosphere and the failure of the modelers to correct errors for almost 40 years, the US government should not base any policy on global climate models and reports dependent upon them, even the reports of the National Academy of Sciences.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), and its parent organization, the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) are hopelessly gone. They see the possibility of tens of billions of dollars going their way if they continue to sound alarms of dangerous carbon dioxide-caused global warming that is not occurring. No wonder the latest IPCC report, SR1.5, changed the definition of climate to include 15 years of forecasts from models that are known to be wrong. The 30-year window that is now considered to define the climate includes 15 years that haven’t happened yet. See links in the September 22 and 29 TWTWs and under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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The US Fourth National Assessment: During the US government transition to the Trump administration the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) released a report called the Climate Science Special Report. Formed in 1989, according to its web site the USGCRP is mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 to “assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” At the time the Climate Science Special Report was released, there was no head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy or scientific advisor to President Trump, and his nomination of meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier to the post has yet to be confirmed. Thus, the report was signed off by a bureaucratic scientist, without any accountability.

The report claims to be “an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States.” For some reason the authors of the report do not realize that in reporting “to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change” natural climate change exists. Maybe they do not realize that natural variation such as ice ages may be a part of global change.

Rebuttal: Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo and others address specific problems in the report by rebutting claims such as that Heat Waves are increasing at an alarming rate and heat kills; global warming is causing more hurricanes and stronger hurricanes; global warming is causing more and stronger tornadoes; global warming has increased U.S. wildfires; global warming is causing snow to disappear; global warming is resulting in rising sea levels as seen in both tide gauge and satellite technology; Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice loss is accelerating due to global warming; rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations are causing ocean acidification, which is catastrophically harming marine life; and carbon pollution is a health hazard. The last ignores the fact that without carbon dioxide there would be little or no life on earth.

Of course, the report ignores the fact that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, changes in clouds significantly affect climate, and climate involves the chaotic motion of two dynamic fluids flowing at different rates interacting with each other and the irregular surfaces of land masses and sea floors. It is doubtful that any of the authors of this “authoritative assessment” of the science of climate change can describe the flow of a stream over an irregular stream bed, rapids, much less than the more complex behavior of two fluids moving at changing velocity as they irregularly receive energy from the sun when the earth rotates and moves around the sun in an elliptical orbit.

Perhaps the saddest and silliest part of this report is the part on Global Mean Sea Level. The graphs claim to show sea levels today with a one-degree C warming since 1890 (preindustrial), sea levels 6 to 9 meters higher 125,000 years ago, during the last interglacial period, when claimed temperatures were 0.9 to 2 degrees C higher than 1890, and sea levels 10 to 30 meters higher 3,000,000 years-ago when claimed temperatures were 1.8 to 3.6 degrees C higher. Three million years ago was before the earth entered into the Quaternary period of ice ages, about 2.6 million years ago. Figure 8 of the Executive Summary shows an exponential increase is sea level rise since about 1890 (shooting up rapidly). The detailed chart shows six different rates of exponential rise in sea levels related to carbon dioxide emissions.

Yet, the only established relationship between carbon dioxide and temperatures is logarithmic, the inverse of exponential. This relationship has been established by numerous experiments in several different laboratories, as discussed in the October 20 TWTW and brought up in a paper by Jock Allison and Tom Sheahen.

With a budget for FY 2017 of $2.79 billion (requested with actual and subsequent expenditures not available), one should expect the USGCRP would hard evidence that increasing CO2 is causing increasing temperatures beyond the modest amount demonstrated by laboratory experiments. Instead, it relies on models demonstrated to be wrong. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and Defending the Orthodoxy.

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Missing Heat: Independent scientist Nicholas Lewis takes on a study claiming the oceans are “warming faster than previously thought.” He finds that if the trends are properly calculated, there is no accelerated warming of the seas. In a second post, Lewis addresses a fundamental error by the authors of the warming study. The authors thought they could remove a systematic error in the data by regression analysis. Regression analysis only establishes a trend in the data, it does not remove systematic error in the data.

It is not surprising to find such errors in surface data. The entire issue of finding “missing heat” focuses on surface data and does not relate directly to temperature trends in the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gas effect occurs. Certainly, El Ninos place a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere and have an important effect on atmospheric temperature trends, for the short term. But no one has been able to establish a relationship between El Ninos and CO2. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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Wind Control: Writing for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, John Constable considers that Germany’s Energiewende may be entering a phase of greatly increasing costs. “Electricity system management costs in Germany are spiraling, in large part due to the sharply increasing costs of compensating renewable generators when their output is curtailed in order to preserve system stability.” In part, his views are based on German reports that are not fully translated, but part of this increase in costs is that Germany’s neighbors are becoming reluctant to accept excess generation, particularly during windy periods. Germany now must pay careful attention to future costs of generation before bowing to political pressure to add more wind.

In a separate post Roger Andrews of Energy Matters analyses wind power generation for most Western European countries, and finds they are roughly uniformly seasonal.

“The results indicate that wind surpluses in Western European countries during windy periods will be too large to be exported to surrounding countries and that wind deficits during wind lulls will be too large to be covered by imports from surrounding countries. This casts further doubt on claims that wind surpluses and deficits in one region can be offset by transfers to and from another because the wind is always blowing somewhere.”

This finding contradicts a popular claim that with sufficient transmissions lines, excess generation can always be unloaded, and a generation deficit can be made up by purchases of readily available wind generated power. Electricity customers may not appreciate the politicians and bureaucrats who have made decisions assuming wind power is low cost and always available. See links under Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy – Control

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Virginia’s Irresponsible Legislation: The governor of Virginia approved irresponsible legislation encouraging solar and wind power including off-shore wind power. The utility Dominion Energy is partnering with Danish energy company Orsted (formerly Dong) on a project about 28 miles (44 km) off Virginia Beach. The initial cost of the project is estimated to be $300 million and it is called the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project (CVOW). Dominion is a regulated utility, thus will earn a profit regardless of the cost effectiveness of the project. It will pass the allowable costs and profit on to its consumers.

In Virginia, the actions of utilities are normally approved by the State Corporation Commission (SCC). The new legislation prevented the SCC from denying the project. However, the SCC reviewed the project and presented its analysis on the prudence of the project. Part of the SCC findings are summarized below:

The facts militating against a standard finding of prudence in this matter include:

Dominion’s customers bear essentially all of the risk of the proposed Project, including cost overruns and lack of performance.

CVOW has the highest cost of any resource modeled in Dominion’s IRP.

CVOW’s cost per kWh (78.00 cents/kwh) is significantly more expensive (from 8.3 to 13.8 TIMES) than other renewable and non-renewable resources, including:

(a) onshore wind (9.40 cents/kWh);

(b) solar (5.60 cents/kWh);

(c) natural gas (6.8 cents/kWh);

(d) demand-side management; and

(e) other offshore wind (8.40 cents/kWh).

Unlike other offshore wind projects on the East Coast, the Company did not choose a Power Purchasing Agreement model for offshore wind, which would have placed all or some of the risk on the Project’s developer instead of on Dominion’s customers.

CVOW is not the result of a competitive bidding process.

Dominion failed to prove that CVOW is needed to ensure reliable service to its customers at just and reasonable rates.

CVOW requires customers to bear the costs and risks in order to demonstrate the feasibility of a large-scale generating resource that will not be competitive with other resource options for the next 25 years under any scenario in Dominion’s IRP.

Dominion has stated its intention to decide whether to construct large-scale offshore wind (in 2019) before CVOW is operational (currently expected no sooner than December 2020).

The economic benefits specific to CVOW are speculative, whereas the risks and excessive costs are definite and will be borne by Dominion’s customers.

One can only imagine what types of projects will be proposed in states that have significant requirements for mandatory renewable electricity, such as California. See links under Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy – Control

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Number of the Month: 26 times market rate. As discussed immediately above, using the cost estimates provided by the utility, the Virginia State Corporation Commission found that Dominion Energy’s: “CVOW’s energy cost is approximately 26 times greater than purchasing energy from the market, which is in the 3.00 cents/kWh range.” See link to Final Order under Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy – Control

“Every wind or solar installation has to be 100% backed up by conventional generation. As a consequence, they are simply useless appendages to the electric grid, like a sixth toe. The small amount of fuel saved in the backup plants, when the erratic wind or solar is actually working, does not remotely pay the cost of the wind or solar make-work projects. Wind and solar are not even cost-effective for reducing CO2 emissions.”

This report is an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States. It represents the first of two volumes of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

“It would thus appear that climate alarmists have got things backwards. Not only has the extra CO2 that has been added to the atmosphere over the past six decades directly stimulated crop production and yield, it has also likely induced an era of more favorable growing season temperatures. And that is a win-win situation for ensuring the future food security of the planet!”

Measurement Issues — Surface

Another failure of peer review, due to corrupt temperature data from a single station

“Montana federal Judge Brian Morris’s ruling issued late Thursday found that the State Department didn’t properly justify why it reversed the reasoning for rejecting Keystone XL in 2015, and it needs to more thoroughly examine issues like the impact of low oil prices and potential American Indian resources along the route.”

[SEPP Comment: One of the possible reasons for getting out of nuclear and US Natural Gas business is to avoid legacy problems that Toshiba acquired when it was buying companies. It has sold many businesses that were associated with its brand name including personal computers, television sets and medical devices to improve its cash flow.]

Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind

The down side to wind power

Wind farms will cause more environmental impact than previously thought

“Some found them appalling, others appealing, but whatever the personal impressions of the naturists activists, it was their messages splashed across their brightly painted bodies that gained the most attention.

“A huge electronic billboard in the city square telling residents exactly how much greenhouse gas they have produced in the past hour. Sounds a little futuristic? Not if you live in Newcastle.

ClimateCam, the world’s first greenhouse gas speedometer, displays electricity consumption information collected from the 15 substations that supply homes and businesses in the Newcastle local government area. The council now believes Newcastle has been established as an international testing ground for climate solutions.

“’We realise that the climate change issue is just so big and we are so, in Australia, far behind the rest of the world that we need to move very, very quickly if we’re going to catch up and have access to the huge economic opportunity that we foresee is coming with the implementation of climate solutions,’ city energy and resource manager of Newcastle City Council, Peter Dormand says.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 24 Oct 2007”

“With the courts and Trump Administration rolling back federal climate regulation, green activists have turned to the states. But there’s a troubling ethical twist: Instead of merely lobbying, activists are placing employees in Attorneys General offices in dubious private-public condominiums.

“Consider a remarkable arrangement brokered by the NYU Law School’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center to fund legal services for state AGs. The group was launched in August 2017 to advance a liberal climate and energy agenda, courtesy of a $6 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which also financed the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

“In August 2017 the NYU outfit emailed then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office, offering to cover the salary and benefits of “special assistant attorneys general,” pending an application from the office that demonstrated how the new attorneys would be used. These privately funded staffers would work out of an AG’s office for two years and deliver quarterly progress reports to the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center.

“Those progress reports would explain “the contribution that the legal fellow has made to the clean energy, climate change, and environmental initiatives” within the attorney general’s office, according to a December 2017 draft of an agreement between the Center and the New York AG obtained by Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

“Attorneys General do sometimes bring on legal fellows or outside help to handle unique cases. But subject-matter experts aren’t in-house or chosen with specific intent to promote specific policies, according to Randy Pepple, who was chief of staff for former Washington Republican AG Rob McKenna. In the New York case, a special interest is funding staffers who could wield state law-enforcement power to punish opponents.

“The State Energy and Environmental Impact Center made clear that state AG offices would only qualify for special assistant AGs if they ‘demonstrate a need and commitment to defending environmental values and advancing progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions,’ according to the August 2017 email to numerous AGs. Mr. Schneiderman’s office suggested in its application for the fellows that it ‘needs additional attorney resources to assist’ in extracting compensation from fossil-fuel emitters.

“That’s exactly what’s happening. The New York AG currently has two NYU fellows on staff, according to the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center. One of the fellows, Gavin McCabe, signed off as ‘special assistant attorney general’ on an amicus brief in June in support of New York City’s suit for damages against BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips , Exxon Mobil , and Royal Dutch Shell for alleged climate sins. That case was thrown out in July by federal Judge John Kennan on grounds that problems arising from climate change “are not for the judiciary to ameliorate.

After discussing another example, the editorial continues with:

“A lack of government transparency makes this arrangement especially troubling. The New York AG’s office, now run by Acting AG Barbara Underwood, declined to comment. Mr. McCabe and Mr. Eisenson could not be reached for comment by our deadline.

“The State Energy and Environmental Impact Center said in a statement that the state offices it works with ‘has the authority consistent with applicable law and regulations to accept a Legal Fellow whose salary and benefits are provided by an outside funding source.’ It added that it places workers with AGs who already have a long history of advancing the center’s energy priorities. ‘The work that NYU law fellows perform is directed by those AGs and not by the Center,’ the Center said.

“At least six state AG offices have already brought on board a special assistant attorney general, according to an August report by Mr. Horner. Besides New York, the jurisdictions include Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia. In September, Mr. Horner learned that Illinois and New Mexico have brought on special assistant AGs as well, which was confirmed by the NYU outfit.

“The ethical problems here should be obvious. Private interests are leveraging the police powers of the state to pursue their political agenda, while a government official is letting private interests appear to influence enforcement decisions. None of this is reassuring about the fair administration of justice.”

Moreover, Fung points out, the problems aren’t even independent: Forests produce clouds. Without an accurate picture of forests, cloud models will remain incomplete.
That’s why Swann is starting a new project: to try to quantify how much plants contribute to the uncertainty in climate model results. With that number in hand, she may have an even more potent tool for convincing other researchers that ecology and atmospheric science are inseparable.
Another potential project involves looking at forest data for observational evidence of the teleconnections found in modeling studies. Swann admits, however, that she’s “a little bit on the more skeptical side” that such signals will emerge amid the many pushes and pulls that forests experience. She and David Breshears, an ecologist at the University of Arizona and one of her co-authors on the U.S. forest paper, are also exploring how future southwestern forest losses will affect the climate of the Midwest, the nation’s breadbasket and one of the most productive agricultural areas on Earth.

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